rsync Essentials

~15 min · rsync, flags, archive-mode

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The flag table you'll never need to look up again

Flag	What it does
`-a`	Archive mode — equivalent to `-rlptgoD` (recursive, preserve symlinks, perms, times, group, owner, devices)
`-v`	Verbose — list files as they transfer
`-z`	Compress in transit (drop on fast LAN)
`--progress` / `-P`	Per-file progress bars (-P = --partial --progress)
`-h`	Human-readable sizes
`-n` / `--dry-run`	Show what would happen without doing it
`--delete`	Remove files at destination missing from source
`--exclude`	Skip matching files/dirs
`--exclude-from=file`	Skip patterns listed in a file
`--partial`	Keep partial files for resume
`--stats`	Print transfer statistics at the end
`--bwlimit=N`	Throttle to N KB/s
`--checksum`	Compare by content not mtime+size (slower, more accurate)

Code

Daily recipes·bash

# Daily workhorse
rsync -avz --progress source/ dest/

# Dry run before any --delete
rsync -avzn --delete source/ dest/

# Sync to a backup, mirror exactly
rsync -avz --delete --stats source/ /Volumes/Backup/source/

# With exclusions
rsync -avz \
  --exclude '.git' --exclude 'node_modules' --exclude '.DS_Store' \
  source/ dest/

# Throttle on a metered network
rsync -avz --bwlimit=5000 source/ remote:/dest/   # ~5 MB/s cap

External links

rsync manual — flag reference

Exercise

Pick a real project directory. Run rsync -avzh --stats --dry-run source/ host:/tmp/dest/ and read the stats — total files, total bytes, files transferred. Then run for real. Add --exclude '.git' --exclude 'node_modules' and observe the byte-count drop dramatically. These flags are how you stop wasting bandwidth on cruft.

Progress

Progress is local-only — sign in to sync across devices.

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